But there he overrated his own powers. No single
adversary could be a match for Asshur at this hey-
day of her greatness, and the time had not yet come
when the iron-mailed giant with the feet of clay
would collapse with its own weight. Naturally, all
that still hoped against hope and still feebly writhed
in the lion's paws clutched at this unexpected and,
as they fondly fancied, still timely aid ; but it proved
to them a delusion and a snare, and the more clear-
sighted among statesmen were not deceived. " Woe
to them that go down to Egypt for help, and stay
on horses," warns Isaiah the prophet and prime
minister of Judah ; "and trust in chariots because
244
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
they are many, and in horsemen because they are
very strong. . . . Now the Egyptians are men, and
not God ; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit "
(xxxi. 1-3).
19. Thus matters stood at the death of Tiglath-
Pileser. Shabaka had seated himself in the throne
of Egypt the year before. This coincidence fa-
vored, indeed suggested revolt. On which side the
43. CITY AND PALACES. (SOLDIERS WITH BOOTY.)
overtures were made, we do not know. But very
soon we find Tyre refusing tribute and preparing
for the consequences. But what the proud queen
of the seas was perhaps not prepared for, was to
see her own sister-cities all along the coast join not
in her support, but for her destruction. Whether
from abject fear for themselves, or from a low and
spiteful jealousy, they all arrayed themselves under
Assyrian command and went to sea against Tyre
THE SECOND EMPIRE. 2 *c
with 60 ships and 8000 oarsmen. Tyre at that
moment had only 12 ships to dispose of, and with
this insufficient force held out for five years on her
rocky islets, vigorously blockaded by sea by her own
country-people, while the Assyrians placed military
out-posts on the coast at the mouth of the river
and at all the waterworks, to prevent any desperate
sally for water. Fortunately, the besieged were able
to procure water on the islands by digging cisterns
and boring wells.
20. How great and general were the hopes raised
by the death of Tiglath-Pileser we see from the
warnings addressed by Isaiah to all the nations of
Syria in turn. To Philistia he says: " Rejoice not,
O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote
thee is broken ; for out of the serpent's root shall
come forth a basilisk and his fruit shall be a fiery
flying serpent. . . . Howl, O gate ! Cry, O city !
Thou art melted away, O Philistia, all of thee ! for
there cometh a smoke out of the North. . . ." (xiv.
29-31). Israel also foolishly rejoiced, and fell to
conspiring. When Shalmaneser, the Book of Kings
tells us, first " came up " against Hoshea, the latter
" became his servant and brought him presents."
But soon after, the king of Assyria " found conspir-
acy in Hoshea ; for he had sent messengers to So,
king of Egypt, and offered no present to the king
of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore
the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him up
in prison." This is the last we hear of the last
independent king of Israel ; whether he died in
prison, or was slain, or lived in bondage, we do not
246
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
know. " Then the king of Assyria came up through-
out the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged
it three years. . . ." (Second Kings, xvii. 4-5).
VIII.
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR. SARGON.
I. " In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of As-
syria took Samaria." These words immediately
follow those with which the preceding Fail of Sa-
chapter closes. Yet they had to be re- Accession
served for the beginning of a new chapter, 722 r 6?c!
for between the two lay the beginning of a new
reign, as the king of Assyria who "went up against
Samaria" was not the same who took it. It was
Shalmaneser IV. who began the siege and carried it
on for three years, whether personally or through
his generals, we are nowhere told, but it was Sar-
gon who completed it. One of the first entries in
Sargon's annals is this : " In the beginning of my
reign I besieged, I took by the help of the god Sha-
mash, who gives me victory over my enemies, the
city of Samaria (ir-Samirina). 27,280 of its inhab-
itants I carried away. I took fifty chariots for my
own royal share. I took them (the captives) to As-
syria and put into their places people whom my
hand had conquered. I set my officers and govern-
ors over them, and laid on them a tribute as on the
Assyrians."* To what portions of the Assyrian
* Another inscription says, "As the former king."
247
ii&^&i:^- ......
44. PORTRAIT OF SARGON. (KHORSABAD.)
(For another portrait of Sargon see " Story of Chaldea," ill. No. 64.)
248
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR.
249
empire the captives were transferred we are not in-
formed, but the Book of Kings specifies some of
them. There we find that the conqueror " carried
Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah,
and in Habor the river of Gozan, and in the cities
of the Medes." Habor is the river Khabour, and
Gozan the portion of Mesopotamia watered by it.
Halah is thought by some to stand for the city
Kalah, and by others for an Eastern province not
very clearly identified, while the general location of
the " cities of the Medes-" cannot be mistaken.
What people were brought to Samaria the same
book tells us, at least in part. They were, in the
first place, people from Babel, Kutha, Sippar, then
from Hamath, and from Avva (unidentified). The
same passage (xvii. 24-33) further informs us that
the newcomers were frightened at the lions which,
it appears, abounded in their new quarters, having
probably multiplied, unchecked, during the late dis-
astrous times, and that,, some of their own number
having been devoured, they attributed the visitation
to the anger of the god of the country, whom they
therefore determined to serve along with their own
gods, to pacify him, and they sent a message of
that purport to the king. " Then the king of As-
syria commanded, saying, ' Carry thither one of the
priests whom ye brought from thence, and let him
go and dwell there, and let him teach them the
manner of the god of the land.' " This was done,
and the result was a very mixed religion, judging
from the simple statement: "They feared Yahveh,
and served their own gods, after the manner of the
250
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
nations from among whom they had been carried
away . . . their children likewise, and their chil-
dren's children, as did their fathers, so do they unto
this day." The foreign nations represented in this
manner in the land of Israel were many more than
the Bible history mentions by name, and we are
enabled to complete the list from the Assyrian
monuments of the time. Sargon in his annals in-
forms us that, in the seventh year of his reign he
" made subject several remote Arabian tribes that
dwelt in a land which no wise men and no sender of
messengers knew, a land which had never paid trib-
ute to the kings his fathers, and the remnant of them
he transported and settled in the city of Samaria."
No wonder, then, that the later Jews of Jerusalem,
who prided themselves on the purity of their race
and worship, should have looked down on this
strange medley of nations and gods, the " Samar-
itans," with the utter contempt and disgust which
we repeatedly find reproved by Jesus in word and
deed in the name of humanity and charity.
2. Who and what was Sargon ? It is not improb-
able that he was the general who conducted the
siege of Samaria, either under Shalmaneser IV. or
in his absence, and that he had won the army's
regard to an extent that enabled him to proclaim
himself king on that monarch's death, in firm reli-
ance on their countenance and support. There is
nothing to prove that such was not the case. As
to his rank and birth, he speaks of " the kings his
fathers." But so did Tiglath-Pileser II., and the
evidence is not considered conclusive in his case,
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR.
251
because he does not mention either his father or
grandfather, as is the invariable custom of other
kings. We notice the same omission in Sargon's
documents. His name yields no indication oneway
or the other. It is the same as that of the ancient
Sargon of Agade, and he may have assumed it
with the royal power. This name, in its original
Semitic form, SHARRU-KENU, is translated "the es-
tablished " king, or " the true, faithful " king. It is
probable that he himself attached a moral signifi-
cance to the name, besides the prestige of a glorious
memory, for he repeatedly plays on the word kinu
in his inscriptions, calling himself "the true," or
* faithful (kinii) shepherd," and generally showing
more sense of moral obligation towards his people
than any of his predecessors.
3. Under the reign of this king Assyria maintains
herself, outwardly, on the pinnacle to which the last
two monarchs had raised her, and still further ex-
tends her dominion. We note this difference, how-
ever, that the wars are more than ever conducted on
all the boundaries at once, and, except in the East,
where the Assyrian arms are pushed far beyond the
Zagros, they are not wars of conquest, but of de-
fence and of repression. The Assyrian policy is
that vigorously centralized despotism so character-
istic of the Second Empire : rebellious cities and
provinces, when conquered, are no longer left to
native princes under the mere obligation of paying
tribute, but placed under Assyrian governors, who
are strictly controlled and directed from home, and
only the remoter principalities are suffered to retain
45- sargon's standard (with figure of asshur),
252
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR. 2 $3
some show of independence, under vassal rulers,
either confirmed or imposed by the distant, yet ever
present and watchful " Great King," " king of na-
tions." The correspondence between the governors
and the central power is brisk and minute in detail,
as we see from numerous reports and despatches
which have been found in the royal archives of
Nineveh, all addressed directly to " my lord, the
king." But not the completeness of this grinding
machinery, not the fear of inevitable and ruthless
slaughter, torture and captivity, nor the wholesale
deportations which continued on an increasing scale,
could keep the subject provinces quiet. Coalitions
were constantly forming, more and more extensive,
more and more desperately bent on breaking the
yoke, and there must have been a lively undercurrent
of adventure, of danger, of narrow escapes and mor-
tal failures, consequent on the conspiring, exchang-
ing of secret messages, sending of open embassies
under plausible pretences, which were going on
throughout the lands that ostensibly owned the As-
syrian dominion, only biding their time to throw it
off. That time had not come yet, not by a hundred
years, and the issue of all these attempts was mostly
calamitous, but their persistence under such dis-
couragement and against such fearful odds was a
sign of the times, especially the fact that many of
them took the hitherto unknown form of popular
risings ; the inscriptions of this reign repeatedly
mention that the people of this or that city dethroned
and slew or " bound " the tyrant " placed over "
them by the Assyrian king, and set up a prince of
254
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
their own choice who refused tribute and straight-
way prepared for war. To be sure, these upstart
princes generally met a quick and deplorable end,
and the rising was quelled in fire and blood ; but to
little ultimate purpose, for the nations had grown
reckless with suffering, and, from standing sullenly
at bay, were passing into that desperately aggressive
stage in which neither worldly wisdom nor statesman-
ship find a hearing, and which ends either in total
annihilation, or vengeance, full and triumphant
more often the latter.
4. Nowhere was the movement more general,
hope more indestructible, than in the West.
Egypt was the soul and secret mainspring of the
resistance which no amount of punishment could
crush, of the outbreaks which no common-sense
dictates could stay. Shabaka, remarks one histo-
rian, was to the nations of Syria a messiah, always
promising, always expected, never coming, because
his strength was not equal to his will. Hezekiah,
king of Judah, was the only monarch who abstained
from conspiring and joining coalitions against the
Assyrians, preserving a strictly neutral attitude,
and most probably keeping him in good humor by
presents, if not by actual tribute, in obedience to
the urgent remonstrances of his spiritual and politi-
cal adviser, the prophet Isaiah, who never ceased
to inveigh against the powerlessness of Egypt and
the foolishness of putting any reliance in her assist-
ance. The prophet's views, thus far, accord per-
fectly with those of the Assyrian monarch himself,
who speaks with a certain compassionate contempt
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR. 2 $$
of the " embassies," which the princes of Syria were
forever sending to the king of Egypt and Ethiopia,
" a ruler who could not save them." It should be
noted that, in the language of the monuments for
these and the following troubled times, "sending
embassies " is another word for " conspiring."
5. Under the influence of these deceptive hopes,
Syria rose up in arms the very next year after Sar-
gon's accession. All the old ground had to be
gone over, all the old battles to be fought over
again, and all the old familiar names confront us
once more : Damascus, and Arpad, and Hamath,
and even Samaria. For the people of Israel had
not all been slain or transferred to distant lands ;
there was a remnant left, sufficient to keep up a
strong leaven of national spirit. In the picturesque
and bitter language of a prophet (Amos, iii. 12),
" As the shepherd rescueth out of the mouth of
the lion two legs or a piece of an ear, so shall the
children of Israel be rescued that sit in Samaria; "
and further (v. 3) : " The city that went forth a
thousand shall have an hundred left, and that
which went forth an hundred shall have ten left.; "
or, according to Isaiah, the most poetic of proph-
ets : " The remnant of the trees of his forest shall be
few, that a child may write them. . . . Yet there
shall be gleanings left therein as the shaking of
an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the
uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost
branches of a fruitful tree." Hamath seems to
have been the headquarters this time. IAUBID (or
Ilubid), apparently an upstart usurper, had pos-
256 THE STOR Y OF ASS YRIA .
sessed himself of the crown, we are told, and incited
the others, having occupied the strong city of
Karkar. In that city, the same before which was
fought the great battle of the first Syrian league
against Shalmaneser II. (see p. 181), Iaubid was
besieged, taken prisoner, and flayed alive by order
of Sargon, who had the execution represented in
full on one of the sculptures in his own palace.
To keep so irrepressible a province under better
control, 63,000 Assyrians were brought over to dwell
in it, probably in the place of the slain and the
prisoners carried into captivity. After that, short
work was made of the rebellion, and the condition
in which the country was left by the Assyrian army
as it marched down to the frontier of Egypt, to
meet Shabaka, the " sultan of Egypt " * {Silta?inu
Muzri), on his own ground, before he could come
up to the rescue of his unfortunate clients and
allies, could not be more aptly and vividly de-
scribed than in the words of a Hebrew prophet :
" That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the
locust eaten ; and that which the locust hath left
hath the canker-worm eaten ; and that which the
canker-worm left hath the caterpillar eaten. . . .
For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and
without number ; his teeth are the teeth of a lion,
he hath the jaw teeth of a great lion. . . . The
land is as the garden of Eden before them and be-
hind them a desolate wilderness. . . ." (Joel, i. 4-
6 ; ii. 3).
* Probably the earliest known use of the title.
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257
258
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
6. The two greatest powers of the ancient world
stood face to face for the first time in 720 B.C.,
before the city of Raphia, situated on the sea-
coast, south of Gaza, the king of which had joined
Shabaka. The occasion was a memorable one and
full of significance, but not auspicious for the older
power, which had long been on the wane, while
her younger antagonist was still in the prime of
her might, and the flaws which were already at
work preparing her rapid ruin, though plainly visible
from our remote and elevated point of view, had
not begun to impair her vigor perceptibly to con-
temporaries or to herself. So the struggle was an
unequal one, and quickly ended in the complete
defeat of Egypt, and the undignified flight of
Shabaka, who left the field accompanied by one of
his shepherds. Sargon did not, however, follow up
his victory by an invasion, as Isaiah had expected,
having too much on his hands at the time, and only
partially fulfilled the prediction of the Hebrew seer
and statesman, whose foresight was not to be fully
justified till many years later.
7. It must have been about the same time that
the long siege of Tyre, begun with that of Samaria,
came to an end. The city does not seem to have
been actually taken ; it is only said to have been
" pacified," and it is very probable that the be-
siegers, having grown as weary of the protracted
and unexciting operation as the besieged, besides
being needed elsewhere, offered terms, heavy, no
doubt, but preferable to utter destruction, and
that Tyre took the alternative and paid the ran-
dom, buying what, after all, proved only a respite.
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR. 2 $Q
8. The next ten years were laborious ones for
Sargon. A vast and powerfully organized conspir-
acy which embraced the entire North and North-
west all the Nai'ri-lands, with several neighboring
countries, and of which Urza, king of Urartu, was
the soul, broke out with the suddenness and violence
of a long-latent conflagration, and kept the king and
his generals so continually on the alert that he
found no time for an expedition which he must
have had much at heart, that against the Chaldean,
Merodach-Baladan, of Bit-Yakin. This ambitious
and crafty politician, after blinding Tiglath-Pileser's
eyes by his voluntary homage at Sapiya (see p. 238),
and thus securing a long interval of peace and
safety, made good use of the ten years that fol-
lowed. How he paved the way for his far-reaching
designs we have no 'means of finding out ; but we
may be sure that he spared neither promises nor
intrigues, neither gifts nor diplomatic efforts, for in
the very year of Sargon's accession. he obtained his
heart's desire, the crown of Babylon, and could rely
on the support of, at least, one powerful ally, Khum-
banigash, the king of Elam. It would seem, from
the sequel of events, that he was not accepted
enthusiastically, certainly not unanimously, by the
Babylonians. Sargon calls him " Merodach-Bala-
dan, the foe, the perverse, who, contrary to the will
of the great gods, exercised sovereign power at
Babylon," and it is easy to imagine the ancient
capital and the other great cities divided into two
parties, the Assyrian and the Chaldean. In his
very first year, Sargon had managed to. make a rapid
2 6o THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
descent on the frontier of Elam and inflict a smart
blow on the usurper's ally ; but he was so pressed
for time, his presence was so imperatively demanded
in the West, to stop the progress of Shaba ka by
marching down on him, that he was not able to fol-
low up this first advantage, and the chance he lost
then he could not retrieve till fully eleven years later,
Merodach-Baladan peacefully reigning at Babylon
during that time, unchallenged and unopposed.
9. It was immediately after the battle of Raphia
that the outbreak in the North took place. No
ordinary local revolt, aiming merely at deliverance
from the Assyrian supremacy and from tribute, but
a mighty coalition, which several princes, hitherto
friendly, were forced to join out of fear, one of them
having been massacred by his own subjects, and
which would most certainly have ended in a collec-
tive descent into Assyria, had not Sargon been so
promptly on the scene himself, repressing, punishing
and negotiating. Yet, though he was as usual victo-
rious at the moment, filled the highlands with terror,
and weeded them of a great number of their inhab-
itants, whom he sent to dwell in Hamath and other
Syrian lands, his success was so far from complete
that the conspiracy continued to spread, and the
coalition to strengthen itself as soon as he was
called away. Indeed, so many were the threads and
so skilfully woven, that for several years he never
could do his work of repression thoroughly, or ad-
vance very far into the Armenian mountains, be-
cause some distant member of the coalition would
be sure to begin a stir at the critical moment and
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR. 2 6l
operate a diversion, by drawing him away from the
headquarters of the conspiracy the kingdom of
Urartu and its immediate neighbors. One year
it is the king of Karkhemish who rebels an unex-
pected occurrence, for he was an old man, and for
thirty years at least had managed to keep on good
terms with his terrible neighbor, and his name, all
through the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser and Shalma-
neser, continually stands conspicuous on the lists of
princes who do homage and bring presents. It by
no means follows, of course, that he could not, at the
same time, have been secretly concerned in the un-
derhand intrigues that were going on at all the Syrian
courts, and, like so many others, biding his time.
If so, he did not choose it well after all, for the angry
lion made, so to speak, just a mouthful of him ; he
was dragged into captivity, with the greatest part
of the people of his capital, while his palace and
the city, that centre of traffic, that mart of the
world's trade and emporium of wealth, yielded to
the royal treasury of Nineveh an amount of booty
fabulous even for those times of wholesale plunder,
Assyrian colonists were then settled in Karkhemish,
and an Assyrian governor sent to rule it. This was
the final blow dealt to the Hittite nationality, which,
after the fall of Damascus, had still thr bbcd in the
city that held the great national sanctuary and the
last national kings, as the blood retreats to the heart
and courses through that stronghold to the very last.
10. Another year, the Median districts in the
Zagros and on the eastern slope of that mountain
range, never quite daunted or submissive, notwith-
262 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
standing ' the Assyrian forts that had been con-
structed at different times on commanding points
and strongly garrisoned, revolted with an unanimity
which could come only from previous agreement,
and which made an expedition imperatively urgent.
The measures which Sargon took, though marked
with the usual ferocity, were certainly wise, and cal-
culated to produce a lasting effect. The cities which
he destroyed and from which the native population
had been transferred to Assyria, he re-built, settling
Assyrians in them, and for their protection he pro-
vided them with forts, thus creating a complete chain
of Assyrian outposts, with characteristic Assyrian
names, such as Kar-Sharrukin, Kar-Nin&b, etc.
(Kar, " fortress.") Some of the rebel princes he had
executed after the usual cruel manner (flaying alive
was the fashion then, rather than impaling), others
he pardoned and reinstated, even adding to their
territory towns that had voluntarily submitted. Of
such submissions there were many. On one oc-
casion he mentions that of twenty-two " chiefs of
towns," on another of twenty-eight, then of thirty-
four. That these revolts stood in direct connection
with the great conspiracy of which Urza held the
threads was amply proved ; and Sargon, in his deal-
ings with the rebel princes, naturally proportioned
his severity or mercifulness to the degree in which
he found them implicated or stubborn.
II. It was not until the fifth year since the first
outbreak in Nairi, and after several hurried and
therefore only partially successful expeditions into
the mountains of the North, that Sargon felt him-
THE PRIDE OF ASSHUR.
263
self sufficiently strengthened and secure in the rear